main homiletics of verses 10 and 11.
The Reward of the Righteous Citizen or Ruler. The Fate of the Unrighteous One.
I. The words imply that it does not always go with the righteous. “When it goeth well,” etc. A good man’s plans and efforts for the good of his fellow-citizens or fellow-countrymen are not always successful. They may need more resources to make them effectual than he has at his command. The men whom he desired to benefit may not themselves be willing to exercise the self-denial for their own welfare that he is willing to undergo for them. They would be willing to reap the harvest of joy, but they do not like to sow the seed of suffering. It often happens that a righteous man is in the midst of a generation who cannot appreciate his moral worth and his intellectual wisdom. It has been said that the intellectual struggles of one age are the intuitions of the next, and men that are now regarded as grand and noble were perhaps looked upon as of little worth in the generation in which they lived. Or a man may not live long enough to complete his plans for the public benefit—the best things are often slow in coming to maturity, and many a righteous man has been called away before he has perfected his designs of blessing for his race. Although the good and faithful servant will always have the “Well-done” of his master, his plans and purposes are often seemingly frustrated by the shortness of this life, the scantiness of his resources, or the misconception of his fellows. History abounds with illustrations of this truth.
II. That there must come a time when it will go well with the righteous. It is an ordination of God’s providence that the righteous man should pass through both experiences. The soldier needs defeat as well as victory to develop all his latent talent, to make manifest all the heroism that is within him. The mariner must pass through storms as well as fair weather if he is to learn the true art of navigation. And so the righteous man must have the experience of apparent failure and defeat to develop faith, and patience, and courage, which would otherwise remain hidden or dwarfed. But when this has been accomplished, a “set time to favour him will come.” “He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him” (Psalm cxxvi. 6). The worth of his character and his work will be recognised freely and generously by many, and must be acknowledged, although it may be with reluctance, even by his opponents. Joseph passed many years in servitude and imprisonment, but by and by his worth was freely acknowledged. “Can we find such a one as this is, a man in whom the Spirit of God is?” (Gen. xli. 38.) Both king and people decided that it ought to go well with him, and it did go well with him now that his ability and character were known.
III. The blessing and consequent joy that comes to others when the time has come for it to “go well with the righteous.” By the blessing of the righteous the city is exalted—“the city” as a consequence “rejoiceth.” Even the bad in a kingdom have cause for joy when the righteous have the pre-eminence in a community, whatever be their condition they would be much worse off under the rule of unrighteousness. The lost in hell and those who are being lost on earth are in a better condition from having the Righteous God upon the throne of the universe. The greatest criminals in our prisons find it better to have a just and righteous gaoler than an unrighteous one. So the whole city has reason to rejoice in the pre-eminence—in the success of the righteous. Such men exalt a city—1. By forming a basis for commercial enterprise. The role of the unrighteous in a city will, in time, prevent commercial prosperity by destroying public confidence. 2. By promoting the just rights of all. That community is blessed where each citizen enjoys freedom to live his life and do the best for himself and others without trampling on the rights of his fellows. Tyranny on the one hand provokes rebellion on the other, and misery to both parties is the issue. The head is intended to think and plan for the rest of the body, the limbs are intended to carry out the designs of the head; if either the one or the other fails to perform its work, suffering comes to the whole frame. So in the body politic. Righteous men strive for the union of all classes for the good of all, and this unity exalts a city—gives peace at home, and is the surest defence against foes without. Righteousness is a stronger wall than any material defence. This is the safeguard of the ideal city of Isaiah’s prophecy. “I will make thine officers peace, and thine exactors righteousness. Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders; but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise” (Isa. lx. 17–18). 3. By averting Divine judgments. Sodom would have been spared if there had been ten righteous within the city. Unrighteousness in a nation must bring national calamity, but a minority of good men delays the visitation. “Except the Lord of Hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we would have been as Sodom, and we would have been like unto Gomorrah” (Isa. i. 9). “For the elect’s sake, those days shall be shortened” (Matt. xxiv. 22).
IV. That as the character and services of the righteous man shall meet with public and grateful recognition, so the man who by his wicked influence has brought misery upon his fellow-creatures shall meet with public execration. Just as the righteous man often seems defeated by untoward circumstances, and all his unselfish and patriotic plans seem nipped in the bud for a time, yet success comes to him in the end, or, if not so, yet at his death his real worth is seen and acknowledged; so a wicked and selfish man may seem to carry all before him for a time, and may even succeed in blinding men to his real character, yet the time comes when his worthlessness and self-seeking meet with their terrible yet just reward. There is a tendency generally in human nature to condone a man’s sins after he is dead, but instances are not few in the history of the world when this humane tendency has been stifled by the exceeding curse that some men have been to the world.
illustrations of verses 10 and 11.
A more vivid illustration of what has been said here concerning a righteous man cannot be found than in the life and labours of William the Silent, Prince of Holland. This noble man gave his all to the liberation of the Netherlands from Spanish tyranny. For many years he bore the whole weight of a struggle which Motley designates “as unequal as men have ever undertaken.” “To exclude the Inquisition,” he continues, “to maintain the ancient liberties of his country, was the task which he appointed to himself when a youth of three and twenty. He accomplished the task, through danger, amid toils, and with sacrifices such as few men have ever been able to lay upon their country’s altar; for the disinterestedness of the man was as prominent as his fortitude. A prince of high rank and with royal revenues, he stripped himself of station, wealth, almost at times of the common necessaries of life, and became, in his country’s cause, nearly a beggar as well as an outlaw.” At times it seemed as if the cause to which he had thus devoted himself was lost, even this disinterested man did not escape the envy and suspicion of those whom he was trying to serve. But he lived to see his work accomplished, and when he fell at last by the hand of an assassin, he was “entombed,” to quote again from his biographer, “amid the tears of a whole nation.” “The people were grateful and affectionate, for they trusted the character of their ‘Father William,’ and not all the clouds which calumny could collect ever dimmed to their eyes the radiance of that lofty mind to which they were accustomed, in their darkest calamities, to look for light. As long as he lived, he was the guiding star of a whole brave nation, and when he died, the little children cried in the streets.”—Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic.
Illustrations of the latter clause of verse 10 abound in history. “Memorable in the prison experiences of Herod Agrippa was the arrival of news that the tyrant of Capreæ was dead. Immediately on the death of Tiberius, Marsyas, Agrippa’s faithful bondslave, hastened to his master’s dungeon, and communicated the joyful intelligence, saying, in the Hebrew language, “The lion is dead.” The centurion on guard heard the rejoicing, inquired as to the cause, ordered the royal prisoner’s chains to be struck off, and invited him to supper. But more memorable was the exultation, widely felt and cruelly expressed, at Agrippa’s own death—that loathsome death, so strange in its surroundings, of which a tale is told in the Acts of the Apostles. The inhabitants of Sebaste and Cæsarea, as we learn from Josephus, and particularly Herod’s own soldiers, indulged in the most brutal rejoicings at his death,—heaping his memory with reproaches. . . . In his account of the death of the Emperor Maximin, Gibbon says, “It is easier to conceive than to describe the universal joy of the Roman world on the fall of the tyrant.” The death of Richelieu is said to have been felt by France like the relief from a nightmare; from the king to the lowest rhymster, all joined in the burden of the couplets that proclaimed it—Il est parti, il a plié bagage, ce cardinal.—Jacox.
Judge Jeffreys. A disposition to triumph over the fallen has never been one of the besetting sins of Englishmen; but the hatred of which Jeffreys was the object was without a parallel in our history, and partook but too largely of the savageness of his own nature. The people, where he was concerned, were as cruel as himself, and exulted in his misery as he had been accustomed to exult in the misery of convicts listening to the sentence of death, and of families clad in mourning. The rabble congregated before his deserted mansion in Duke Street, and read on the door, with shouts of laughter, the bills which announced the sale of his property. Even delicate women, who had tears for highwaymen and housebreakers, breathed nothing but vengeance against him. The lampoons which were hawked about the town were distinguished by an atrocity rare even in those days. Hanging would be too mild a death for him: a grave under the gibbet would be too respectable a resting place: he ought to be whipt to death at the cart’s tail: he ought to be tortured like an Indian: he ought to be devoured alive. . . . Disease, assisted by strong drink and by misery, did its work fast. He dwindled in a few weeks from a portly and even corpulent man to a skeleton, and died in the forty-first year of his age. He had been Chief Justice of the King’s Bench at thirty-five, and Lord Chancellor at thirty-seven. In the whole history of the English bar there is no other instance of so rapid an elevation or so terrible a fall.—Macaulay.